The Golden Cat
by Akinis
Summary: The story of a single-life run-through of the level "House of Pleasure" from Dishonored.


**The Golden Cat**

Samuel dropped me off on the riverbank again, like he had the previous night. I walked away from him, passed over a sewerage pipe, and he was gone. Hidden. Safe. I was alone again. I pushed my hand into my pocket and brought out the heart. It was paradoxically both warm and cold as it beat slowly against my fingers. It whispered to me, the Overseers have departed from their hall and walk the streets, it told me, but I hardly listened. I was watching men run for their lives across the bridge above me. I was too far away to see their faces, but they ran like rats and I know they must have be filled with terror. The first one had made it halfway across the pointless bridge to nowhere before a fiery explosive slammed into his back and he flew apart. The others fell seconds after him, blowing metres up into the air, some of them falling back onto the cold stone of the bridge, others down into the water below. Either way, the bodies were left where they fell. The machine that killed them let out a thump with each blast, before a satisfied beep when the last limp body fell. I was ... I still am, appalled, but not surprised. I did not know Burrows well when he was the Royal Spymaster, but I know he would not hesitate to stoop this low. It is easier to order something done than to do it yourself. Sokolov's inventions have made it even easier.

I moved forward again, pulling myself over a full sack and onto a loading bay. I walked forward, crouched, my eyes seeing with the gift of The Outsider, the colour bleached from the world, the bodies of the alive and dead almost glowing with sunflower radiance. I walked forward, confident in my gift, but its span is short, and I picked out a guard before before my gift showed him to me. He was looking roughly in my direction. He could spot me at any moment: a ripple in the shadows. I sidestepped behind a rock and peered back around. He was looking away, back out to sea, idly flinging a rock into the water. I stepped forward, my eyes their own again, and Blinked to an overflowing trough of waste. My body twisted forward, everything blurring together for an instant, the sounds of the world twisting into a kind of whoosh, and then I was behind him, above him, looking down on his helmet at the level of my knees. I had teleported, The Outsider's gift of Blink moving me forward. I hopped down and grabbed his neck. I hugged him, probably closer to him than anybody had been in years, and he was soon unconscious, falling forward. I halted his fall and hoisted him over my shoulder as if he were a sack, walking to the edge of the platform and dropping him onto an outcrop of stone above the water. He would be safe there. I turned then, walked up the steps and onto the street that lies perpendicular to the bridge, swapping the sand-like dirt of the beach for hard Dunwall road. I looked through the walls, through the road, through the bridge with my gift of Darkvision. There were two officers there, but they would not look my way. They patrolled along the huge metal tower which turned slowly, its searchlight picking out the ground, looking for me. It was an intimidating feat of architecture, almost as tall as the houses around it, made, or at least cased, in a dark iron, moulded into unforgiving lines. I did not study it for long. I walked down the street backwards, following the path of the tower's light with my eyes, until I was out of its reach, when I turned. There was a ledge, which lead onto a vent and from there, with the aid of The Outsider's Blink, to an odd kind of bridge, tiled and sloping like a roof and spanning the alleyway. From there I climbed up and onto the roof of the adjoining building. I looked down on the street, specifically where it twists and becomes Bottle Street. I could almost see the entrance to the Old Dunwall Distillery from where I crouched, although not quite. I considered my options up there, whether I should attempt speaking with Slackjaw or not. I decided against it. It was unlikely he knew that I had been the one who had poisoned his men, but I could not take the chance. I thought then also of all I had heard about The Bottle Street Gang when I was with Jessamine. I did not want to have to trust them.

I surveyed my other options from that roof, reaching out as far as I could with my ability to teleport, but I could reach nothing. So I let myself fall carefully back down onto the street bridge. I walked forward, my left hand extended in front of me, reaching out, hoping to make it onto the bridge that crossed over the next street. But something jerked inside me before I was ready, and I found myself shooting through the air, the world twisting around me and I slammed into the side of the bridge and fell. There were two men down on the ground ahead of me, guarding the entrance to the distillery and they would have seen me fall onto the hard stone ground. I hit awkwardly, pain rippling through me, my legs going off in opposite directions with groans of muscle and bone. I straightened to face the men, but my vision was red around the edges. I thought I could hear my own heart beating. If the men in the alley had wanted to kill me, they could have done so by throwing a stone. I reached into my pocket and drew out one of Sokolov's elixirs, downing it quickly. The taste was organic and electric, somewhere between standing too close to a Wall of Light and drinking old rotted corpse, but I could feel strength return to my body as death was pushed further away.

"Slackjaw wants to talk to you." One of the men was saying, but they did not in enforce their boss's words, instead simply standing aside. I could see the amusement in their faces. 'What would Slackjaw want with this idiot', I know they must have been thinking. This idiot who had fallen out of nowhere and half killed himself on the flagstones. I still felt my heart beating. It took me a second to realise that the heart was not mine, but the one that The Outsider had given me in a dream. I took it out, its strange mixings of wire and flesh pulsating in my hand, and held it up towards the the building above me. It beat quickly, the metal wires that stuck out of the muscle dancing, the strange retracting and enlarging almost hypnotic. The heart was telling me that there was a Bone Charm up there. Relics of The Outsider, talismans of power. Power wrapped in the bones of ancient whales. I put the heart away and looked through the walls. There were bodies up there. Plague victims, no doubt. I Blinked up onto a ledge, from there to a low roof and again onto the balcony of the house where the Bone Charm lay. The room was typical: bland walls, small, a bare wooden floor, the furniture covered with dust covers, the doors boarded up. There were two bodies lying on the floor and I could hear the sound of a swarm of rats devouring a third behind a door. The scuttling, the scraping and the ripping apart of organic matter. I looked through the walls again, into the little alcove from where the sound was coming. There was someone alive in there, standing amongst the rats. Through the outline of his body and position, I saw he was holding a sword. He could not have been a Weeper, then. But who else could stand amidst a swarm of rats? I did not know and I did not care to find out. The rats had almost finished their meal and the man was standing there, still unmolested. I picked a grenade from my belt and threw it under the boards that blocked the doorway. It exploded, blowing the wood apart and I entered to find the rats dead and a human dressed from toe to head in leather, a gas-mask covering his face, the garb of a whaler. His blood was flowing fast across the floor, staining it in a cobweb of red. I picked up the corpse and threw it upon a discarded mattress. Both his legs had been blown off at the knee by the explosion and one arm as well. His coat was respectable and hard wearing, not unlike my own. There was little I could learn from the body. I turned and examined the little alcove I was in more closely. One end, walls and ceiling, were covered in a purple cloth and a Bone Charm rested on a cabinet positioned like an altar. Some unholy shrine to The Outsider, possibly the last twisted comfort of one of the rotting corpses back in the main part of the room. I cleared the alcove and the room beyond it of everything useful, then returned cautiously to the balcony. I looked down onto the balcony of the house opposite and saw another man fully dressed in leather stalk out, turn and go back inside, only to return a few seconds later. He was looking for me, some kind of ally of the first man, no doubt alerted to danger by the sound of my grenade. I watched him pace back to the balcony, then back into the house, then back to the balcony. As he turned this last time, I teleported down behind him, following him into the dark interior. He walked quickly between the chairs and tables, but I moved slightly faster, catching up just before he turned, wrapping my hands around his neck and holding until he went limp in my arms. I let him fall to the ground as I looked around the room. Linen-wrapped corpses were piled up against one wall. The room had been stripped of anything of value by the authorities. I turned back to the window, looking idly out onto a roof at my level on the other side of the street. A figure appeared at the apex, walking slowly and confidently across it. I was in full view. I took an instinctive step backwards and watched as the figure turned to continue his circuit. The shadows of the room had saved me. He disappeared a second later. I waited a long time for him to reappear, the buzzing of flies to one side, the light snoring of my victim to the other, the smell of death and rot clogging up the enclosed air. The figure eventually reappeared, crouching down on the roof, watching my exit. I focused my telescope eye on him, drawing my crossbow and taking aim for his head. I missed, the bolt striking him instead in the chest. He leapt up. Then he disappeared. For a heart-stopping moment he was nowhere, a black smoke filling the void where he had been, my eye still zoomed in, now looking at nothing. And then something filled my vision, a satchel the only thing I could see. I twisted my eyepiece back hurriedly. He was there, standing in front of me, his sword drawn, a crossbow in his hand. I took a step back, hesitating, shocked by what had happened. He moved back too, into the corner of the room, and while I was hopping from side to side, panic gripping me and deciding what to do, a bone-white flash passed by the side of my head. A crossbow bolt. I fired my own instinctively and I heard a tumbling from the shadows. I approached the light-deprived corner cautiously, unsure if I had felled my attacker, or if he had somehow teleported behind me and was preparing a killer blow. This was not the case and I leant against the body, breathing deeply. This was dark magic. I had not expected this. I would be ready next time.

I left the room, Blinking onto one of the thick pipes which are now so common in Dunwall and walked across it, over the roof where the whaler had crouched and down again onto another pipe. The pipe's surface was smooth and the curvature tricky, it was large enough to contain a man, but I could walk across it easily. It took me to the end of Clavering Boulevard, the road book-ended by two deadly Walls of Light, the first of Sokolov's security inventions: solid walls of electricity designed to eliminate anyone without the proper pass. I could see three Watch Officers on the road below me and another standing on the balcony of Doctor Galvani's house. I stood there for a moment, looking around, moving on along the pipe and away from my destination, looking for a route of some kind to take. I came quickly to an unlocked door, and without any other option, I opened it and walked into a dark room, lit by dirty windows which let in very little light. I was in a strange corridor: wide, one side ending in a door, the other continuing into an open space. There was a painting on the wall there, lit by candles, the only warm light in the room. Two men, Bottle Street Thugs, were standing looking at it.

"So this is art?" one of them asked in a dismissive tone. I moved against the wall, looking around, waiting for something to present itself. I heard them finish their conversation and then steps, as one of them started walking towards me. I pushed myself further back, trying to squeeze behind an easel. Again shadows saved me, the man stopping directly ahead of me, turning to face back towards the painting. I moved out from behind the easel, keeping low, hoping to creep up behind him and knock him out now before he could turn, for I knew that when he did he would see me. But he was too close, and he spotted me anyway, turning and drawing his sword, shouting to his friend. I straightened and pulled out my gun, dancing nervously towards the thug, who took a swig of some potent alcohol, which he spat at me, holding a match to the torrent and turning it to flame. I scooted backwards as the fire hit me, searing the edge of my skin, blistering it painfully. I twisted my head, staring through the smoke and disorientation, seeing my first attacker recoil slightly from the fire while his friend ran towards me, his own cleaver out, ready for the attack. I shot the first man in the head and raised my sword at the perfect time to block the second man's attack, knocking his blade back and allowing me to step in and stab him through the heart. That was not the end though. As the bodies fell and before I could clear my mind enough to think, two more thugs thunder down stairs I could not see and burst into the room, their heads turning and seeing me standing over their dead friends. Before they could reach me, I shot one in the head, stepping in and blocking the next, killing him with a single strike. I stood there for a moment after that, four bodies lying on the floor, two with bullets shattering their skulls, two with holes through their shrivelled black hearts.

I turned away and looked again with my Darkvision, my gift from the Outsider, looking through the walls and floors. I could see no other men. I cut back to real sight and looked around. The room was a mess, the floor covered in rubble so old that grass had begun to grow up between the stones. A rat scurried past and the air was thick with the smell of must and damp. The words,

"BLOOD FROM THE EYES!" was written in thick painted letters on the floor. This house had not been a home for a very long time, I remember thinking to myself. I moved forward to the painting, staring with confusion at the portrait, so at odds with its run down surroundings. A gold guilt frame hung well-lit by candles on the dark, rotting walls, protecting a portrait of an old, gnarled man bending over a painting which was hidden from view. The man had a mane of thick, raven black hair, long down his neck, stretching around into a beard that merged with his head hair, so that one could not make out where the beard began and the hair ended. The man's nose was prominent, and his eyes beady, his hand long-fingered but twisted faintly with age. The man was recognizable instantly, as was the artist. The painting was an Anton Sokolov, a self-portrait, perfectly forming the likeness of the scientist, inventor and painter. I took it carefully off the wall, rolled it and slid it into a tube on my back. An original Sokolov, a painting by the hand of the most influential man of our generation, was worth hundreds.

I turned and crept into the stairwell, even darker than the main room and even more destroyed: the banisters caved in and graffiti lining the walls. Two large banners, one on either side of the door to the room I had come from, proclaimed that 'Tyvian Burial Urns' could be found within, and it was then that I realised that I was in some sort of gallery or museum. I came up the stairs and into what once would have been a lavish apartment room, but had been left to moulder. I walked around a wall and past a lighted fireplace and the mounted head of a huge bull, its blank white marble eyes staring out at nothing. Beyond that was a small bedroom, the walls lined with old advertisements: Hound Pits, The Golden Cat, Greaves Lighting Oil, even Piero's Remedy. Above the bed though, and taking up an entire wall, was another painting by Anton Sokolov. It was of a tall, handsome-looking man wearing blue whaler's clothing not dissimilar to the ones worn by the black magicians who attacked me earlier, only these were of a more presentable variety. The plaque at the bottom of the gold frame read 'Daud and the parabola of Lost Seasons'. There was something familiar about the man's face, and while I stood there trying to place it, my mind went back to the moment I lost Jessamine, the Empress. I cannot often remember that time. I find it difficult, the pain and the shock and the immediate torture it brought makes the events dark and shadowy, a chaotic mesh, especially in those early days, but seeing that painting and the man's face made me remember it. First I remembered those I had fought, the assassins who had come out of nowhere, dressed in full leather like the whalers of the Flooded District. And then I remembered the man who had pushed his blade through my Empress's heart, the man who took her away from me, the same man who stared at me now from that canvas, tall, handsome and confident. Daud. The man who had killed the Empress.

I took the painting down and turned away, trying to push the memory back. There was a desk by a long window, on which rested a note: an invitation to the reopening of The Golden Cat for a Mister Bunting. I read it through twice, the first time with the words running over me, my mind still on other things, and the second time properly, returning to the present, returning to my mission. 'Everyone here loves you and half the girls consider you a friend' the last line of the letter read, before Madame Prudence's signature. I felt sick just reading it. 'Half the girls consider you a friend.' It was hard to imagine amongst the filth and the dirt of the man's house. 'We're ready to take care of you' another line read. I took the letter and returned to the main room. Opposite the bedroom was a reinforced iron safe door blocking off an entire room. I walked up to it, but it was combination locked, the numbers on the dial making up a cautious 0 0 0. I could feel The Outsider's heart beating in my pocket. There was a rune on the other side of that door and I had no way of reaching it. I turned around and headed back down the stairs, finding my footing difficult on the uneven, pitch black steps. I passed the floor I entered by and came to the ground floor. Straight ahead of me was a bathroom, the door removed and replaced by horizontal wooden slats. As I approached a swarm of rats flowed out of the entrance way and headed straight for me, straight for meat. With a mass of squeaks and starved squeals they pounced on me, their fangs biting into my shins as they swarmed over each other, gripping onto my trousers and pulling themselves up, away from the competition. I ran backwards, swinging my sword at them, decapitating two or three of the horde with each swing. But the flow seemed endless, a squeaking, scrabbling, stinking tide of disease and death, each rat the size of a small terrier, but much more vicious. I grunted in pain as the teeth and the claws bit into me, swinging wildly until eventually there were so few left that they ran, off to find some other hole to feed in, perhaps to find the waiting corpses upstairs. I looked at the shredded mess of blood and skin that my legs had become and grimaced, although the damage was not nearly as bad as it could have been. I entered the bathroom, which contained nothing of interest, and moved out back through the hall, past the fallen banners advertising some forgotten exhibition and into the kitchen, where I ate stale bread and tinned whale meat. The taste ranged from bad to basic, but it tasted better than Sokolov's Health Elixir and the effect, while not as potent, was the same, my wounds began to heal. I proceeded out of the kitchen and again through the hall, into a large room that contained nothing but an old table, two barrels, a sink and an empty dresser. The edges of the room were covered by a layer of rotting papers, while the entire centre area of the large room was filled with the words,

"SEND US FOOD NOT BULLETS."

I remember at the time thinking how artistic the graffiti was, like an instillation, a people's plea in the middle of a grand, rotting house. The barrels were of fine wine I noticed as I left the room, taking a short staircase down to a door that led onto Bottle Street. I do not think I will forget that room in the deserted mansion, the plea for life scrawled in the heart of decaying decadence. The plague equalises all of us. Or so I thought.

The door onto Bottle Street was locked, so I returned to the top floor and took the balcony door there back onto Clavering Boulevard. The light outside the house was a surprise and I let it, with the fresh sea air, run through me for a moment before I turned to consider my surroundings. There were still three Watch Officers below me and one on Doctor Galvani's balcony. I Blinked off the balcony and onto a spindly electric light above it. I reached out with my teleport again, but it could not quite reach the roofs I needed to reach to pass the Wall of Light from above. I looked down. Clavering Boulevard is built above another road, a poorer area, and as I looked down I saw Weepers vomiting in that road, stumbling, rotting where they stood and waiting to die. I looked back up. I needed to get onto the roof. Clavering Boulevard passes through a number of buildings before entering a kind of square, off which The Golden Cat lay. There were two ways there, either through the Wall of Light, which would involve killing several Watch Officers in open combat, or over the roof. I could not risk the combat, so I would have to go over the roof. I surveyed my surroundings again and realised I was as close as I could get. And I was still just too far away. But only just. I looked down again, below me was the road with the Weepers. If I fell, I would be dead before they could reach me. A drop half that high would have killed me. But I needed to reach the roof. So I jumped. I kicked off from the inch-wide ledge I had been crouching on and started to fall. I slammed my left arm out in front of me, the mark of The Outsider lighting up, and I pulled myself forward, space twisting around me until I was standing on a thin window ledge, my forehead level with the roof line. I pulled myself up, and walked forward across the wide roof, over the apex, and immediately back again when I heard the grinding of a Watchtower's turning. I crept over more cautiously the second time to see that only the top of the Watchtower was visible from the roof, so that the sensor, the floodlight, was not visible. I Blinked onto the platform at the top, spun the whale oil container aside and pulled out the tank, stopping the Watchtower's rotation instantly. The main threat removed, I looked down to see two Watch men walking back and forth across the road, seemingly oblivious to their tower's lack of movement. I considered my options. The Watchtower had a control box, the centre of its programming, and I had four rewire tools: inventions which could reprogram technology to do their user's bidding. I could use it to illiminate all of the Watchmen in the area. But I did not want to. I was here to save Emily and to kill the Pendleton twins. These Watchmen were not my enemies, not really. Instead I Blinked onto a nearby roof, and from there onto a lamp post. There were two Watchmen directly below me, talking about a promotion. They could have looked up at any time. I Blinked onto the next post, and then an external ventilation shaft. I was just above them now, having progressed down several metres since being on top the Watchtower. It would have taken just a slight raise of the head, and one of them would have seen me. All I knew was that somewhere off this square was the way to The Golden Cat. There were steps leading down to an alleyway beside where I was crouching and I decided to try them. They led down to a small courtyard, where a woman was trying to defend herself from two Watch Officers who were demanding elixir from her. The courtyard led at one end down another set of steps, but I could not Blink all the way across the gap. About half-way was a low sheet of scrap metal leaning on a barrel, so I teleported to behind that. But I had set myself down wrongly and I half stuck out over the top of the metal. The Watchmen did not see me however. They were too busy with the woman, yelling at her, arguing that the elixir would help her more if she gave it to them instead of to her baby. They had their swords out. It sickens me now that I did not help her, but at the time I was too focused on saving Emily to help this woman I did not know. There is no greater distraction than love. I Blinked again out of my waist-high hiding place and down some more steps. They came out on the road that I had seen earlier, the road Clavering Boulevard runs over. I looked down its length to a group of Weepers, four of them, slowly rotting while they walked, emitting groans that I could hear and a stench that I could smell even from this distance. I zoomed in with the lens Piero had designed for me and I fired at one of the Weepers with my crossbow, aiming and missing the head, again striking the chest. The Weeper let out a shriek and fell and the other Weepers turned and stared down the road towards me. I should have been in full view, in the light, but I was at a distance, and the Weepers' eyes must have rotted so much that they could not see me. I shot the Weeper I had hit again and she died, before taking two more, one with a single bolt to the head. They were merciful deaths and I feel no remorse. The people those things had once been would have wanted me to kill them, I know that. No one wants to die like a Weeper. The plague is truly a terrible thing. I spared the last one's life, however, creeping up and putting him to sleep while he vomited in the middle of the road. I do not know why I spared him, condemned him to the slow, painful, undignified death of the plague.

I continued on. There was a small opening in the side of the rock and I entered cautiously, tip-toeing up a few steps, walking along a slight raised platform, stone on one side, the other open to another corridor at some parts, blocked from it at others by scrap metal and bricks. I heard footsteps ahead of me and slowed, peering cautiously around the corner to see Granny Rags pacing around a small room, talking to herself. I approached and she did not even look at me as I did so, instead continuing her ramblings about The Outsider. She always unsettled me. Expensive coat, expensive boots, well made up hair, and yet dirty, stalking up and down, her knees bent, her arms held slightly ahead of her. The way that her body moved seemingly randomly while her head swivels and turned so that it could stay staring at the same point. She disturbed me greatly even then. I took a Bone Charm from a small table near her, along with some bread and coins. She ignored me throughout, continuing to speak in that soft, sweet old woman's voice that she always used. I left her and continued down the street, but found nothing. I had taken a wrong turn. I returned to the steps, looking through the ground to see one of the watchmen walking away from me. I advanced towards him, planning to knock him out before he turned and I was almost on him when another figure appeared: his friend, walking down the steps towards me. With one step I was moving forward, with the next I was moving back. Stalking like some clown, my eyes forward, my legs carrying me back down the stone steps, away from the Watchmen and back into the acrid stench of the Weepers. I waited a second, watching through my black magic eyes as the bright yellow figures, the colour of the Weeper's excretions, walked to and fro around what I knew to be the corpse of the woman they were arguing with before. Life was cheap in Dunwall then, as cheap as a swing of a sword. Cheaper than a bullet. I waited until one of them was alone and I crept up behind him, knocked him out and dragged him all the way back to where I had seen Granny Rags, dumping him in a dumpster along with the Weeper I had knocked out earlier. Perhaps the Weeper acted as a lesson for the Watchman when they woke up. If they woke up. Then I returned to where the woman had been killed, kneeling by her body and closing her eyes. She had a key on her: the key for an art dealer's apartment. Probably the basement door to the house I had thought was a gallery. I straightened, looking through the bleached coloured Darkvision, seeing another officer walking down the steps, about to come into the courtyard. I hid in the only place I could, behind a huge pipe. It afforded me a view of the entrance to the courtyard, as well as, unfortunately, leaving me in plain view for about the length of a stride. I cut back to real vision to save on my manna, sure that the guard would spot me trying to wedge myself between pipe and wall. I expected him to look around, but he did not, instead continuing straight across the courtyard, walking the angles that miraculously left me hidden from his gaze. I watched him with Darkvision, a yellow silhouette against nothing, his gaze picked out for me by my gift, as he walked to the steps on the other side of the courtyard and back again. I slipped from my hiding place as he passed, creeping up behind him and knocking him out. I must have been a shadow on his peripheral vision for a moment. The loudspeaker picked up its wail as I came up the stairs and blinked back onto an awning, the voice of the announcer, the ever present harbinger of bad omens, telling the people of the Distillery District that they were under a whale oil ban. They would not be able to cook, light or defend themselves until the Lord Regent changed his mind. I listened to this, hate filling me, as I blinked from one lamp post to another. That is probably why I missed my footing and fell heavily to the ground, pain rippling through me as my leg bones shot up into my torso. I landed better this time though, but the Watch had seen me. An officer shouted and his crotch appeared an arm's reach away from me. Before he could bring his feet to a stop on the smooth stone ground, I had reached into my retinue of spells and bent time, twisting the very nature of reality around me. I do not know if I slowed everything else down, or sped myself up, but the world immediately became grey, the man's shouts became drawn out notes, his skidding sluggish, moving at the speed of syrup rather than water. I however was free, and I Blinked up, onto and awning, then to a street sign and up again, to a balcony. This last jump was made as time flickered back and I crouched as the officer below yelled for his men to find me. I pulled myself up onto a roof, crouched, but moving quickly across the tiles and slates, Blinking back onto the Watchtower and slipping back in the whale oil I had removed earlier. There was a yell from below, but I ignored it, moving to the control box and slipping in my rewire tool. Then I gripped the railing and watched as the tower spat inaccurate volley after inaccurate volley at the confused Watchmen, taking a cadet to pieces first, then an officer. I lost track after that. Some tried to run, one man pushed himself into a corner, but it just delayed his demise. The searchlight found them, and the explosives destroyed them. When I was sure that they were all dead I came down, looted their bodies and pushed open the door to The Golden Cat's district.

The first thing I saw, sneaking out of the dark tunnel that marked the entrance way to the district, was a Watch officer coming out of an alleyway with a whore. I Blinked away before either could see me, but I saw them. I took refuge in a destroyed house, the staircase lying flat on the ground floor. The Outsider's heart beat in my pocket, so I picked it out and pointed at the ceiling. The grotesque object beat frantically, a rune was incredibly near. I Blinked up and took it from a table, the heart calming down in an instant and moved to the window which overlooked the side of The Golden Cat. It is a huge sturcture, one great raised domed cylinder making up the axis of the building, while blunt-topped towers and courtyards came off it. I saw into the main entrance way, there was grass there, cut and clean, bright and fresh and green. It reminded me of Jessamine. I had not seen grass like that since she died. It had all been weeds and dirt and steel and slabs and bricks and girders and slats since then. The window had a ventilation shaft running along beneath it and I swung myself onto it, following it up onto a roof and then down again, a Blink away from one of the many balconies of The Golden Cat. A Watchman stood idly whistling on it, leaning on the clean white balustrade, two doors behind him leading into the establishment. There was a window open on the floor above that. I considered my options. I could probably take that one guard without any problems, while the window was a more risky option. I sat on the roof and watched for some time, making sure that the guard's position would not receive reinforcements, before I moved. I walked along the ventilation shaft and dropped down silently behind him, taking a step forward and throttling him until he fell unconscious. I moved to the keyhole, listening to an indistinct conversation between the proprietor and someone I could not see. They moved off and I watched through the windows in the doors and through the walls until there was only one guard in the room. I waited till he started walking away from the door, then I entered the luscious hall beyond, stalking up quickly behind the Watchman and knocking him out. I dumped him with his colleague on the gleaming marble balcony outside. I waited a minute, long enough to know that the room beyond was clear and would stay that way. I moved through, padding softly over the crimson carpet; past the ornate green patterned wallpaper; the carved wooden tables laden with exotic fruits and pies; the strange bronze sculptures of smoothly twisted female forms; the pictures and paintings of surprisingly respectable looking women; past the painted screens; under the stained-glass bulbed lamp-shades that covered everything in a red light; and over to the unshaven, dirty Watchman who stood looking at a painting. I sent him to sleep, laid him out on the balcony with the others and moved back through into a small room where a near-naked whore lay asleep on a red velvet upholstered banquette, with a patron lying with his face on her breast. I did not look at them though. The room had a small balcony off to the side where a guard stood looking out over the sea. I approached and as I did so the man lifted his arms from the railing and began to turn. I could not afford to fight this man, I knew that. One shout from him and the whole building would be upon me. So I rose up quickly, pushing my legs forward and, instead of embracing him as I had done the others, I plunged my sword into his neck. Blood spattered down onto the metal banister and flowed across the floor down into the sea to be lost amongst Dunwall's shit. I looked briefly over the vista, taking in Dunwall's skyline, before turning and looking back at the doorway. The roof above the door was low and I Blinked myself up onto one of the cast iron layers of the roof, from where I easily Blinked up another layer. A large section of the top part of the building was surrounded by a railing and I was just about to approach when I noticed a Watchman standing at the other side, about to turn around. I quickly stepped back, but my feet slipped and I fell down onto the previous layer. The fall was not long, however, and I caught myself well. Composing myself, I used Darkvision to see that the man was back scanning the other side of the city. Blinking up, I moved over the metal, jumped over the railing and knocked him unconscious before he turned. I looked around after he had fallen. The little area I found myself in was completely cut off from any entrance to the building. The Watchman was not guarding anything in particular. Not only that, but there was no visible way of making it up onto that part of the building. I had managed it because of my supernatural powers, but how this simple sentinel made it up, I do not know. There was no visible way of making it anywhere useful from where I was, so I returned to the balcony where I had killed the Watchman. As I re-entered the room with the sleeping escort and her customer, I noticed two rats squeaking in a corner. Even here there were rats. I returned through the extravagant hall and into a rough servants' staircase. Across from the door I had entered by was another, plain metal and unadorned, the type found throughout Dunwall's functional areas. Looking through the keyhole, I saw a woman, old by her physique, bending over some papers on a desk directly opposite me. I opened the door silently, stalked directly forward, bending under a table, and coming up behind her. I knocked her out. It must have been Madame Prudence I realised as her paint came off on my sleeve. The owner of the Golden Cat was dressed like a sixty year old whore mixed with a clown. She had so much paint around her eyes it looked as if both had been beaten black. Her bright purple trousers were painful to the behold. She was ridiculous and disgusting. A woman who made a living out of selling the bodies of other women. She had what looked like a master key on her person and the cabinet that I propped her sleeping form against contained two of Piero's Elixirs and one of Sokolov's. I took one of the former, leaving the other two bottles behind. My stores were full, and if I needed to replenish I could always return here. Looking at the framed sign proclaiming that 'the boldest measures are the safest!' I left the room and moved back into the ornate hall, the sound of muffled female groaning and laughing floating through the floor boards. From there I entered a large circular room, grand and ornate in its scale and finishings. I walked straight past a courtesan, barely two metres from her and in plain sight, but she did not see me, all her attention was focused on trying to rouse a sleeping Watchman, attempting to get him back on duty so that he would not lose his job. The man did not wake. I stuck close to the wall and must have only made it about a quarter of the way around the circle when I came to large double doors which I pushed open, more out of cautious instinct than anything else. The room below was circular and slightly lower than the room I had been in, necessitating steps down. The walls were plain, unadorned metal, hard and harsh, lit only by one life-sapping electric white light. The floor was cold, blank black-and-white blocks, like some huge chessboard. The overall effect was one of a cell. This was helped by the contraption that filled the centre of the room. An uncomfortable, upright metal chair which was attached to what looked like some electrical engine which buzzed ominously. Something that resembled a clamp came over the occupant's head, two sparking and glowing nodes positioned just inches from his cranium. The machine was a torture device, I could see that immediately.

"I have been here for almost half an hour," the man who sat in the chair spat as I walked in. He was blindfolded so could not see me and he instructed whoever it was he thought was there to pull the lever on the machine next to him and to stop when he gave the code word 'retribution.' So I pulled the lever. Electricity flew across the man's head letting out a harsh buzzing, making the man spasm, his head rolling from side to side while he let out a garbled cry.

"Oh, I deserved that one," he said as the almost solid jets of electricity passed, a satisfied smile crossing crossing his face. He told me of how he had cheated the Pendletons of thousands and then sat there twitching, his legs moving inwards and outwards to some narcotic beat. I looked at him closely. His hair was white and well cut, he wore an expensive and stylish suit. Had I met him under any other circumstance I would have thought him respectable. But here, indulging in a masochistic pleasure, I found him pitiful. I pulled the lever again. He moaned with pleasure and continued with his story of how he had robbed the Pendletons, telling me to not hold back. I pulled again. Another crackle of almost solid power burnt over him and he cried out for me to stop.

"That was perfect, but it was all I can take. Call my servants, we are done."

I pulled the lever again.

"We're done I said, let me out! I'll have you whipped you bitch!" the man shouted, straining at his arm restraints and sitting up.

I pulled the lever again.

He cried in pain then, and suddenly became afraid,

"Who is this, what do you want."

"Your name."

"Mr Bunting, the art dealer, what do you want!"

"The combination to your safe," I said, thinking back to the house I had broken into earlier and the reinforced safe door I had found there.

"One, three, eight," he told me. I left him there. He did not deserve to die. Perhaps this could be a lesson for him.

I left the room and continued round the circle, everything bleached of colour by my Darkvision, bodies picked out in yellow. There was another Watch officer standing on another balcony, and again I came up behind him and knocked him unconscious. I turned as he fell to see the silhouette of another guard walking through the room on the other side of the wall, straight for the balcony door. There was nowhere to hide. I pushed myself as far away from his side of the door as possible, behind a couple of spindly chairs. I raced wildly through my options in my mind, none of them would prevent the man seeing me, or shouting out before I could take action. He was almost at the door now, up a short flight of stairs. I gripped my crossbow hard in my left hand. Then he stopped and turned towards the wall through which I was looking. My heart beat in my throat. He would have to take just one more step and he would see me. If I tried to move, he would see me. I waited breathlessly as he stared down at something on a table I had not noticed. He stopped and looked up. I could see his gaze swivelling from side to side, staring out of the door and over the city behind me. Then he turned and walked back into the room. I followed. I grabbed him by the shoulders just as he was passing through a small area walled off by panels, dragging him back and holding him till he fell limp. I dumped him on the balcony with the other guard. At the far end of the room from where I had entered there was a grand set of double doors and I leaned down to stare through the keyhole. One of the Pendleton twins, one of the men I was sent here to kill, was flirting with a courtesan, trying to impress her with his knowledge of politics. At first he was patronizing, but when it became clear that she had a good knowledge of the subject herself he became more appreciative. He seemed almost charming. But he had to die. It was not only his brother's wish, but a necessity if we were to place Emily back on the throne. But it was the knowledge that it was only his slave mines that allowed Morgan Pendleton to be so relaxed that really spurred me to action. Their conversation ended and I ducked into a screened alcove to consider my options. I had not seen anyone else in the room with them by looking through the keyhole, or by looking through the walls with Darkvision, but that did not mean that I had not missed someone. I decided to try and attack both courtesan and Lord with sleep darts. They would fall quickly, the girl could be spared and Morgan could be taken care of in his sleep. I walked out of the alcove and opened the doors. I shot Morgan before he was aware I was there and the courtesan as she sank to her knees in terror. I closed the doors quickly and scanned the room, but there was no one else there. I returned to where the two sleeping bodies lay. I picked the courtesan up first and laid her down on the huge double bed that took up the centre of the room. There were two potions there, Piero's and Sokolov's remedies. Whether they were payment or there to keep the woman alive, I do not know. There was a small balcony at the back of the room looking out onto the sea. I picked up Morgan's unconscious body and threw it over the edge. That way the courtesan might not be blamed and there would be no evidence that I was there. I left the room and started moving back around the edge of the large, circular room I had just left, looking through the walls with Darkvision, as had become my custom since acquiring the gift from The Outsider. As I did so two guards entered the room and started walking towards the door I had just left.

"There's been word of a rough-up," one of them said as I crept around behind them. The door I had originally entered to reach that room, the one that led back to the hall off which the first balcony was built, was positioned next to a curving staircase, which I took in a moment of panic and confusion. Looking through the walls and floors, I could see two Watchmen talking at the top of the second circular room. I crept up the stairs and around a solid partition, staying low, trying to move away from the guards. I twisted around the curvature of the stair guard, the only thing blocking me from the Watchmen and then over open ground for a moment and under a table.

"Did you see that?" I heard one of the men behind me say, but he did not pursue. My dash ended at the far end of the room, hidden from the rest of the space by a small ornamental screen which gave privacy to a large pair of double doors. The screen was low in the centre but high in the corners, but my first problem was the Watchman standing facing the doors. That was lucky. Had he been facing any other way I would have been forced to wait out in the open, where the guard behind me would surely have noticed me. I knocked the man out and moved into the corner of the cover. Looking at the silhouettes behind the door, I could see a man talking with what looked like another whore. Lord Curtis Pendleton, I presumed. I looked back behind me. A Watchman was walking straight towards my position. I pushed myself into the corner and considered the situation. I had not had time to survey the room in my dash inside and now it was hidden from me. All I could really tell was that it was light, pleasantly so, lit by tall windows which fed light to drooping plants. It was the kind of room Jessamine would have liked: open and airy, plants growing, an interior touch of cultivated nature. But the light that would have made me so happy with her was now my enemy. I am a thing of the shadows now. I knew there were definitely at least two Watch Officers in the room with me, but there may have been more and I did not know whether the ones downstairs would hear if one of the ones up here called out. The Watchman kept walking, then appeared around the corner. He spotted me before I could do anything about it, drawing his sword and yelling out for help with shocking speed. I jumped back and held my sword ready, blocking his cautious swing at the perfect time and slicing him across the neck. I turned, there was another man there, an officer in sky blue uniform. He swung and I blocked that too, sending him staggering back long enough to stab him through the heart. For a brief moment I thought that was it, two men easily if hastily dispatched, then I turned my head a fraction and saw five men running at me, swords and guns out. There was no way I could take all of them. I hesitated long enough for them to reach me, stepping pointlessly backwards as they charged. For a moment I considered throwing a grenade, but the men were ready, they would move before they would die, probably into a better position. So I slowed time. The world became grey and the men's movements and shouts slow, but at that moment I still felt a sharp pain bite into my back, a sword blow that had me stumbling forward. A man had come around behind me and swung at my exposed side, the blade hitting just as time slowed. Still, I could not let this delay me. I was only time's master for so long. I jumped out of the melee and ran towards a balcony, another balcony that I had noticed on my way up. I pushed myself up onto the rail and Blinked onto a ledge that wrapped around the tower as time freed itself. I shifted along it as the men behind me shouted their confusion and once I was sure that they would not be able to see me from any angle, I pushed myself against the warm stone and breathed. I was trapped. I turned and looked behind me, but the window next to me looked into the room in which I had guessed Curtis Pendleton had been, now evacuated and my Darkvision did not reach into the room beyond. I was trapped and blind. I could hear the Watch Captain ordering his men to fan out, to keep on their guard. I could hear the men make their threats, that they would find me and kill me when they did. And I was outside, hidden and safe, but also trapped and blind. I looked tentatively down. Only water was below me. I used Darkvision to look down through floors and walls, down into the lower sections of The Golden Cat. They were looking for me down there as well. Maybe that could be to my advantage. If they were spread out, then they were weak and vulnerable. I could take them one at a time. But I needed a plan. I shuffled along the ledge, going the other way from where I had come, allowing me to see a balcony that led into Pendleton's room. Then I slipped.

I fell two floors down into the water, swimming quickly up to the surface. There was no way back up but through the building. I swam around the edge of The Golden Cat Bath-house, trying to find a way back up, when something bit me hard on the leg. I grunted with pain as I felt a chunk of flesh being pulled from me. Parts of my matter removed quickly and brutally. I began to fade, quickly, my life being sapped by ravenous fish. I swam furiously for a jetty, pulling myself up and immediately attracting the attention of a Watch Officer waiting on the pavement above. He called out as he ran for me, his sword and gun out. I was too far away to swing at and he tried to take aim with his pistol. I ran up and swiped at him, drawing blood but not killing him, allowing him to retaliate and swing back, a blow I could not avoid. We separated then, each taking a step back from the other and he charged me. I blocked and returned, striking him and killing him. I threw his body into the water where it was quickly devoured by the fish that had tried to devour me, the blood from the carcass spraying up through the water and spattering my coat. I had passed Lord Morgan Pendleton's face-down body in the water in my flight from the fish. I had not expected that. He was just floating there, arms and legs spread eagled, face down. Cold as the water that surrounded him.

I waited on that jetty for a long time, cold, tired, nervous and afraid. Not for myself, but for Emily. Would she ever be Empress if I died now? If I failed to kill the last Pendleton and save her from this hell hole? I do not know. I listened to the seagulls reeling over head as I leaned against the cold stone block walls and waited for the guards to give up their search, hoping that they would. Eventually I moved forward, up the jetty and back onto the road. I did not make it far before a courtesan spotted me and cried for help. I walked slowly backwards towards the jetty and as I did so I saw a figure leave The Golden Cat and start running towards me. I was about to turn and flee, dive back into the water and swim in the hope that the fish would not find me, when I looked more closely at the man's clothes. He was not a Watchman. He was a patron. A noble patron. Lord Curtis Pendleton himself. I have no idea why he had taken it into his head to run out of his safe house to find me, what noble or self-satisfying instinct brought him out, what spur of aggression and ego-fuelled rage brought him there, sword in hand to face me. But whatever it was, I owe it my life. I drew out my gun and shot him once through the head. He died instantly. Clean and quick.

More figures had appeared behind him now and I ran to the water's edge and dived in, swimming furiously away from the carnivorous fish. I returned several minutes later. No Watchmen had stayed to look for me. I pulled myself back up onto my jetty and leaned against the wall again. The same spot. Nothing had changed, except that Lord Curtis Pendleton was dead. All I had to do now was find Emily. I moved back up the stairs and knocked out the woman who had spotted me earlier. I peered around the shelter that the corner of the Bath-house gave me and into the road. A guard stood staring at my position, waiting for me to approach from that angle. I waited for several minutes for him to move, but he did not. Eventually I decided to Blink across the road and into a cloister, moving forward until I was past the Watch Officer who had been covering my position. I had seen four officers from my position back by the unconscious girl: the one who had been covering the road; another who guarded the entrance to The Golden Cat; one I had lost sight of; and another who was walking straight towards me. He was still some way off, but there was no way he would not see me eventually, so I shot him with a sleep dart. He fell to one knee, and then to the ground, silent. Still unsure of where the fourth man was, I came out of the cloister and into the light, knocking out the first man, the one I had Blinked past and pulled him back under the buildings. I moved forward then, through the shadows, until I came to a turn, the choice of continuing along or turning to the right, away from The Cat but also away from the Watch Officer I had just spotted meandering towards my position. I followed the rubbish-strewn alleyway, walking along a group of chests stacked in a rough staircase shape. I pulled myself up them and then Blinked onto a roof, Blinking onto an electric light and pulling myself up onto the same roof that overlooked the balcony by which I had originally entered The Golden Cat. Back to square one.

I crept along the ventilation shaft, this time choosing the open window by which to enter. I dropped down and entered the servants staircase, climbing until I reached the top, a short hall with the girls' rooms off the side. A woman was busy in one of them, and I closed the door on her so that she would not see me come past. I looked through the keyhole of the next. Emily was there, curled up in a ball, sitting on the floor in the corner. My heart rushed and I pushed open the door. I had found her again. My Emily.

"Who are you, why are you wearing that mask?" she asked standing up. She was not afraid, her tone was more accusatory than anything. Strong-willed, like her mother. I prised the mask off my face and she ran towards me calling my name. I hugged her then, Emily back in my arms, safe. She told me how they had told her I had been killed. Then she told me matter-of-factly of a plan to escape, that she had almost got out twice. She ran off, saying over her shoulder that if anyone tried to stop us I could fight them. And she was right. I would fight them. I would have killed everyone in that building to keep her safe. We moved down the service staircase, unnoticed and unchecked, and when we reached the exit at the end I drew out the key that I had found on Madame Prudence and we left.

The door gave out into the end of the interior cul-de-sac where, earlier, I had found Granny Rags. She was still there, pacing back and forth. All I had to do now was get back safely. Emily was already safe and that was all that mattered. There were no more Weepers in the road outside and I moved along it, up the stairs, through the courtyard where the woman had been murdered, up into the square where I had turned the Watchtower against its own and onto the roof that I had managed to reach from Clavering Boulevard. I Blinked down onto a ventilation shaft, much easier than Blinking up had been and to Mr Bunting's house. I entered, moving up through the deserted wreck of a home and to the safe, twisting the dials to 138. Inside were a rune, a number of antiques and another Sokolov, a painting of the men I had just killed: Morgan and Curtis Pendleton. It was odd, looking at the painting. The last person to look upon that canvas would have done so when the twins were alive and well, and now they were both dead. They were more alive in that paint then they were now in the flesh.

I left by the basement door, the one that led onto Bottle Street, the key for which I had found on the murdered woman. It gave out onto the street and I Blinked up onto a roof and from there onto the small bridge area that I had tried and failed to reach earlier. I stood for a moment, looking out to where I had been just a few short hours before. But something had changed. There was a figure standing on the roof on which I had been. A whaler. One of Daud's black magic assassins. I pushed myself against a wall and out of his view and as I did so I heard the rush of air that I had heard before when the last assassin I had met had teleported. I looked around wildly, desperate to find where the man had appeared until I heard fighting from below. I peered cautiously over the edge of the roof on which I was perching. The assassin was fighting the two Bottle Street Thugs I had talked to earlier. He had his sword out and was fighting valiantly, but he was outnumbered two to one. They killed him quickly and moved back to their post, but I was still unnerved by the experience. That moment of terror when I did not know where my enemy was, whether he was behind me or below me or above me. I do not like that uncertainty. I Blinked onto the street-spanning roof bridge on which I had been before and scanned the street for any more assassins. I did not see any. I did, however, see a man kneeling on his knees in an alley. He was dressed like a normal man and looked to be drunk, but I could not be sure he that was not my enemy. Slackjaw's men could have turned against me and this man could have been working for him. I had six sleep darts left, so I brought one out and shot him. He fell down, unconscious, a bottle smashing loudly as he fell. Whether the bottle was a drunk's reassurance or a thug's weapon I do not know, but it fell with him all the same. I walked down the street, my eyes on the slowly spinning Watchtower and moved sideways back onto the beach. I kept my eyes looking through Darkvision all the way back to the boat, but there were no surprises. I had rescued Lady Emily Kaldwin, heir to the throne, daughter of my precious Jessamine Kaldewin, and the only family I had left. 'I will sleep well tonight,' I thought as Samuel pushed the boat out onto the river. Unlike the Pendleton twins.


End file.
